Sunday, July 31, 2005

OK, some of you would rather not follow all the notes I've left on Working With Fedora Core, and prefer to stick with Windows. I understand that. However, there are ways to make your Windows computer run better and cheaper. To help you out with that, the OpenCD project makes a bunch of Open Source programs available for Windows on a single CD. There are a large number of open source programs, including Firefox, Thunderbird (email), OpenOffice.org (Word Processing, Spreadsheets, etc.), games, screen savers, and more.

The programs are great, I really like Celestia, which is a space simulation which lets you look at the Universe from any vantage point in the Universe. But on my generic Dell computer, Ubuntu came up with a 640x480 screen, so the graphics were not good, and there was not option to change it. A better CD for playing around with Linux is probably Knoppix, which doesn't have trouble detecting my graphics card and giving me a properly sized screen.

But ignore that, and download or order the OpenCD disk. Or just download the programs you want.

Sometimes it's a pain to read PostScript (TM) files on screen, even though it's easy to print them out. On my WorkMac I can't even look at a PostScript file unless I use a postscript viewer of some kind, even though the Mac Preview utility will read PostScript's somewhat less featured offspring, PDF.

Fedora comes with at least one PostScript viewer, gsview, available in the Extras directory. However, the viewer I like best is gv, a front end to the standard ghostscript utility. gv will display both PostScript and PDF files, and lets you zoom in and move around the page. It's a very old program, the source was last updated in 1997.

I could have installed directly from the gv source, but I thought I'd find an RPM file to work with. Unfortunately, it's in none of the standard repositories. However, rpm.pbone.net found RPMs which claimed to be compiled for FC4. Rather than trust that whole-heartedly, I got a copy of the Source RPM and compiled that. The install was straightforward, and now I can view PostScript and PDF files in the old-fashioned way.

Notes:

Both the Gnome and KDE desktops have PostScript viewers, I just don't remember what they are called and find gv simpler to use.

At some point I found on the web a suggestion that you partially protect yourself from malicious SRPM files by setting up an account which is only used to compile RPM packages. This isn't a total panacea, but it's a good start, so I set up just such an account. (What this does is keep the SRPM's makefile from strolling through your own directories. Of course, it might choose to scroll through everyone's directories, in which case you're still hosed, but that would take a lot longer time and you might notice that something weird is going on.)

Saturday, July 30, 2005

The Hindmost remained in footstool mode, needs explaining, I suppose, since no one picked up on it. When I ran across it the other day, I thought of it as a perfect quote. It could only be written by one person, and anyone who knows that person's work would instantly recognize the author and the story setting, if not the exact work involved.

If you don't know what's going on, the Hindmost is (well, was) the leader of the Pearson's Puppeteers in Larry Niven'sKnown Space series. The quote is from Ringworld's Children, but to understand that book you'll need to read Ringworld, at least, and probably The Ringworld Engineers and The Ringworld Throne. (Ringworld is Niven's best novel, the other two are, hmm, somewhat less well-done. I can't comment on Ringworld's Children yet because I haven't finished it.)

Anyway, a Puppeteer is an intellegent herbivore who believes that discretion is the only part of valor. When in danger with no place to run (always Plan A), a Puppeteer tucks its two heads (which look like Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent puppets under its body, along with its three legs, creating something that looks like an ottoman (Plan B).

At All Costs Avoid Plan C: Under no circumstances approach the ottoman from the side nearest the hind leg.

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

Monday, July 25, 2005

OK, it appears that cats lack the gene to taste sugar. [Washington Post, registration required, if you don't know about bugmenot.com it's not like I didn't tell you.] That's right, house cats, lions and cheetahs (Oh! My!) all lack the gene, or, at least 247 "letters" of it.

Now, one of our cats eats roses -- I would have thought because they were sweat, but apparently not.

Saturday, July 16, 2005

August 14, 2011: Many years after moving from Comcast to Verizon, and thus losing a big chunk of free webspace, I've finally moved the pictures in this article to Picasa, so that you can see them again.

One of the nice things about old-style GIF images is that it was easy to set the background to be transparent, so that it would show up on a web page without a funky border. New-style PNG images can also do this, but there doesn't seem to be a reliable stand-alone way to do this. Fortunately, I found directions for making a transparent background using the GIMP. The directions seem to be for an older version of the GIMP (I'm using 2.2.7), so let me write down the current directions here. They should work on a Windows machine as well as under Linux.

Bring up the GIMP, and load in your picture. For our purposes we'll use this bit of modern art:

Now right-click on the image and select Layer > Transparency > Add Alpha Channel. (Alpha Channel is what gets made transparent.)

Right-click again, Select > By Color.

Left-click the image on the color you want to make transparent.

Right-click once more, Edit > Clear. The color you selected should now be replaced with a checkerboard pattern.

If you do know the title reference, then be warned,
there are possible spoilers below. I'm going to explain things to
the mundane, then discuss the shows. If you haven't seen them yet,
you might not want to read any further. Though, really, there isn't
much here you couldn't figure out on your own.

Back in my youth, there was a rule that at most one Science
Fiction story could be shown on television at one time. Thus
The Twilight Zone never overlapped with Star Trek.
OK, there were a few shows which tried to cash in, like Lost in
Space, Men into Space, and even My Favorite
Martian, but they weren't really science fiction. (Men
into Space was more like "Blue Angels With Rockets", a
techno-thriller kind of film. I loved it, but it wasn't SF.)

Post Star Trek, we got a bit more SF on TV: the dreck
Space: 1999, the really-cheesy but great back-story
Battlestar Galactica, and, when the local PBS station could
afford it, Dr. Who. Then came Star Trek: Next
Generation, followed by Deep Space Nine, Babylon
V, Buffy, etc.

But science fiction on TV really arrived with the SciFi channel.
I know, they run a bunch of grade C movie stuff, but they also run SciFi
Friday, which features Stargate SG-1, Stargate
Atlantis, and Battlestar Galactica (Mark II, with
glowing-backbone female Cylons). These shows are generally as well
written as an average Star Trek episode, usually pay more
attention to continuity, and have a whole lot bigger budget.

So last night they kicked off the new season for all three
shows. SciFi has a strange release schedule: the shows will go on
for a couple of months, then they'll show reruns until January, when
they'll show the rest of the season. In Britain I understand that
the series will start in September and show straight through, so
though the UK won't see these shows for a few weeks, by November
they'll be ahead of us. Hence the spoiler warnings.

For the past few years a friend of mine and I have been
discussing the shows by email. Generally I give a few thoughts on
each episode, crack a few jokes, and go on, while he gives a
reasoned review of the episode, including how it fits in with his
worldview.

Pity you won't get that here, you just get me cracking the
jokes. But OK, if he wants to respond, he can, in the comments
below.

For what it's worth, last year I liked SG-1 best, followed by
Battlestar, and then Atlantis. I can go into the reasons if you
like, but that's my prejudice as I look at these shows. This year,
though, SG-1 has major cast changes, so my opinions might
change.

OK, if you're looking for the possible spoilers, they're just
below the line. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Stargate SG-1:

Beau Bridges: (who looks much worse than his Dad did at
the same age) tries to be a tough guy. But he's not, so far, he's
just moaning about how good the SGC people are, which means he can't
yell at them. That never stopped Hammond. This guy needs some
character development. How come the President answers HIS phone
calls? And who is #1 on his speed-dial?

Claudia Black: (sorry, I don't know the new character
names, yet, so we'll have to go with real names): I liked her
character in the tryout last year, and she'll be OK as Daniel's love
interest and gadfly. However, she should get a new dress designer.
The current outfit just emphasizes the fact that there's not all
that much up there. Also (and more importantly?), as portrayed this
week, her character is basically stupid. She actually believes
what people tell her about devices they've stolen, and she can't
think more than 30 seconds into the future.

Other Farscape refugee: This is the star of the show?
We'll see when they give us a longer-than-10-second opening. Looks
too much like Daniel, as Claudia pointed out, and tries to act too
much like Jack, without the essential post-MacGyver cool factor.
Also, I'm not sure from the flashbacks why he got the Congressional
Medal of Honor, and not any of the other X-302/303 pilots that were
holding off Anubis. Wasn't he just doing his job, like all the
rest?

Daniel: Thank God he lost the beard. His rather
intimate relationship with Claudia could be fun. It was last year,
anyway.

Teal'c: Hopefully he'll get more to do than shoot
bullets at walls and try to hold up collapsing ceilings. He's
supposed to have some conflict with

Lou Gossett Jr.: Why is he slumming here? OK, Isaac
Hayes did it last year, but that was only for a couple of shows and
he's basically got no career anyway. What possesses a Movie Star to
appear on a cable SF series? They'd better do something good with
his character.

Jack: He plays chess? He's good at chess?

Carter: Tapping is on post-maternity leave, supposed
to be back full-time in a few weeks.

Villains: Don't have any yet, so it's hard to tell.
<Wholesale Speculation>
It is interesting that Merlin is an Ancient. This means that the
Ancients were backing the Celts at about the same time that the Asgard
were backing the Norse. This didn't lead to conflicts? Could this
explain the rise of the Goa'uld? Battles among the four races. Come to
think of it, this could explain why we never see the Furlings. The big
four fought amongst themselves, and the Furlings were wiped out.
And why do the Nox hide? Are they hiding from the Goa'uld? Maybe
they're hiding from the Asgard.
And who created that plague that wiped out the corporal Ancients? Could
it be, ..., I don't know, ... maybe ... the Asgard? You'll notice the
Asgard are the only ones of the big four still running around the
universe.
OK, probably not.
</Wholesale Speculation>

Stargate Atlantis:

Speaking of Asgard, we're corrupting one here. By the time this
season is through, Hermiod (bad choice of name, unless they're going
to get Preparation-H as a sponsor) is going to be chucking nukes
into stars just to watch the pretty light-show. And why does he
curse under his breath? Does anyone on the Daedalus
understand ancient Norse? Come on, it's not like Daniel Jackson is
there.

It would have been interesting to have Dueling Colonels ("I get
to draw and quarter Sheppard." "No, I get to draw and quarter
Sheppard.") but I guess that would get old fast so they had to get
rid of one. Interestingly they kept the one who seems easier to get
along with. Maybe he's a pal of Beau Bridges.

Plot: Did the Wraith really believe that explosion?
They didn't even come down to check. And does this mean that the
Atlantis team has to stay hidden for the rest of the season? After
all, once they blow up another Wraith ship all of the hive will be
back.

Battlestar Galactica:

I don't know. But then, I never know about this series.
I'm guessing that Adama is going to be out of commission for a few more
weeks, so we'll have some conflict between Tigh's sense that he's unfit
for command and his wife's pushing him to take control. We've also got
to reunite the cast, which is now spread over half the galaxy.

I see how the Cylons were able to win the first time: Our heroes cable
together a network of three computers, on a presumably shielded
spacecraft, and a Cylon virus is able to break it down in minutes. The
virus must have been left in the computer's OS, just waiting for a
chance to do mischief. And no ones gone through the code for the last
20 years. Or else, all the programmers are secret Cylons.

I keep thinking about writing an SG-1/Galactica crossover.
Except that Sam (or even Rodney) would figure it all out in about 5
minutes, and Jack (or Farscape Guy) would blow the Cylons to
smithereens a few seconds later.

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

This blog is rapidly approaching 2,000 hits on the sitemeter in the right-hand bar. If you are the 2,000th hit, send me a picture of the meter and I'll send you a genuine emailed no-prize, just like the ones Marvel Comics used to give out. You'll also get recognition in the Blog, if you want it.

Monday, July 11, 2005

It's the All Star break, which makes it a good time to take stock
of the season so far. Here are the standings after Sunday night's
games:

2005 American League Standings

EAST

W

L

PCT

GB

RS

RA

Boston

49

38

0.56322

0.0

473

429

Baltimore

47

40

0.54023

2.0

431

409

NY Yankees

46

40

0.53488

2.5

478

431

Toronto

44

44

0.50000

5.5

428

381

Tampa Bay

28

61

0.31461

22.0

399

553

CENTRAL

W

L

PCT

GB

RS

RA

Chicago Sox

57

29

0.66279

0.0

413

339

Minnesota

48

38

0.55814

9.0

396

360

Cleveland

47

41

0.53409

11.0

406

365

Detroit

42

44

0.48837

15.0

387

375

Kansas City

30

57

0.34483

27.5

376

485

WEST

W

L

PCT

GB

RS

RA

LA Angels

52

36

0.59091

0.0

420

355

Texas

46

40

0.53488

5.0

476

430

Oakland

44

43

0.50575

7.5

400

386

Seattle

39

48

0.44828

12.5

377

388

2005 National League Standings

EAST

W

L

PCT

GB

RS

RA

Washington

52

36

0.59091

0.0

357

361

Atlanta

50

39

0.56180

2.5

428

348

Florida

44

42

0.51163

7.0

383

368

Philadelphia

45

44

0.50562

7.5

410

417

NY Mets

44

44

0.50000

8.0

387

381

CENTRAL

W

L

PCT

GB

RS

RA

St. Louis

56

32

0.63636

0.0

447

340

Houston

44

43

0.50575

11.5

365

362

Chicago Cubs

43

44

0.49425

12.5

394

394

Milwaukee

42

46

0.47727

14.0

392

374

Pittsburgh

39

48

0.44828

16.5

365

403

Cincinnati

35

53

0.39773

21.0

434

518

WEST

W

L

PCT

GB

RS

RA

San Diego

48

41

0.53933

0.0

406

385

Arizona

43

47

0.47778

5.5

394

479

LA Dodgers

40

48

0.45455

7.5

384

422

San Francisco

37

50

0.42529

10.0

393

457

Colorado

31

56

0.35632

16.0

389

493

In the above table, "RS" and "RA" stand for "Runs Scored" and
"Runs Allowed," respectively. More on that later.

From the standings, we see that there isn't any contest in either
the AL or NL Central divisions, that the AL and NL West are, if not
wrapped up, at least uninteresting for the moment, and that the most
exciting baseball is being played in the AL East, closely followed
by the NL East, where the Nationals are surprisingly in first
place.

And "if the playoffs started tomorrow" we'd have Minnesota and
Atlanta as the Wild Cards, and the Yankees would be out of the
playoffs. (Yankees delenda est!)

Now one of the rules of baseball is that to win you have to score
more runs than your opponent. If we look at the above table, you'll
note that the Washington Nationals, though in first place in the NL
East, have been outscored 361-357, even though they are 16 games
over 0.500. What this means is that the Nationals are winning close
games (except this last week) and losing blowouts. This is Not a Good
Thing for Nats fans, because the winner of a one-run game is
determined mostly by luck.

This is quantified by what is known as the the
Pythagorean
Method, which in its simplest form says that the fraction of
games a team should win is related to RS and RA by the formula:

Pct. = RA2 /(RA2 + RS2)

So what would the Pythagorean rule say about this season? Let's
calculate how the standings would look if each team won and lost
according the to above equation:

2005 American League Standings

EAST

RS

RA

PW

PL

Pct.

PGB

Toronto

428

381

49.0953

38.9047

0.55790

0.0000

NY Yankees

478

431

47.4348

38.5652

0.55157

0.6605

Boston

473

429

47.7338

39.2662

0.54866

0.8615

Baltimore

431

409

45.7770

41.2230

0.52617

2.8183

Tampa Bay

399

553

30.4701

58.5299

0.34236

19.1252

CENTRAL

RS

RA

PW

PL

Pct.

PGB

Chicago Sox

413

339

51.3816

34.6184

0.59746

0.0000

Cleveland

406

365

48.6664

39.3336

0.55303

3.7152

Minnesota

396

360

47.0860

38.9140

0.54751

4.2956

Detroit

387

375

44.3540

41.6460

0.51574

7.0276

Kansas City

376

485

32.6598

54.3402

0.37540

19.2218

WEST

RS

RA

PW

PL

Pct.

PGB

LA Angels

420

355

51.3291

36.6709

0.58329

0.0000

Texas

476

430

47.3552

38.6448

0.55064

2.9739

Oakland

400

386

45.0491

41.9509

0.51781

5.7800

Seattle

377

388

42.2493

44.7507

0.48562

8.5798

2005 National League Standings

EAST

RS

RA

PW

PL

Pct.

PGB

Atlanta

428

348

53.5788

35.4212

0.60201

0.0000

Florida

383

368

44.7170

41.2830

0.51997

7.3617

NY Mets

387

381

44.6875

43.3125

0.50781

8.3913

Washington

357

361

43.5098

44.4902

0.49443

9.5690

Philadelphia

410

417

43.7467

45.2533

0.49154

9.8320

CENTRAL

RS

RA

PW

PL

Pct.

PGB

St. Louis

447

340

55.7473

32.2527

0.63349

0.0000

Milwaukee

392

374

46.0667

41.9333

0.52349

9.6805

Houston

365

362

43.8590

43.1410

0.50413

11.3883

Chicago Cubs

394

394

43.5000

43.5000

0.50000

11.7473

Pittsburgh

365

403

39.2058

47.7942

0.45064

16.0414

Cincinnati

434

518

36.2953

51.7047

0.41245

19.4520

WEST

RS

RA

PW

PL

Pct.

PGB

San Diego

406

385

46.8612

42.1388

0.52653

0.0000

LA Dodgers

384

422

39.8603

48.1397

0.45296

6.5008

San Francisco

393

457

36.9863

50.0137

0.42513

8.8748

Arizona

394

479

36.3194

53.6806

0.40355

11.0418

Colorado

389

493

33.3822

53.6178

0.38370

12.4790

Here "PW" and "PL" are the wins and losses as predicted by they
Pythagorean rule, and yes, I've kept way to many decimal places.
(You'll note that the total number of wins in this table isn't equal
to the total number of losses. That's because the Pythagorean rule
is applied on a per-team basis, so a win for one team isn't
necessarily a loss for another team.)

For the Central and Western divisions of both leagues these
results are essentially the same as the actual records. In the
Easts, however, things are drastically different. For one thing,
Toronto is actually a very good ballclub, ten games above 0.500.
The Yankees aren't doing as badly as Mr. Steinbrenner thinks,
they're in contention for the Wild Card. And in the NL, Atlanta is
in its accustomed place, and Washington is at about 0.500.

Of course, what this tells us is that the Pythagorean rule isn't
exact, and will have some discrepancies, especially over only a
portion of a season. But it does suggest that the Nationals have
been playing over their heads, as anyone who watched the games with
the Mets and the Phillies will attest, and that the AL East is going
to be very interesting.

OK, now for the fun part: Let's assume that for the rest of the
year teams will win at their current Pythagorean rate,
but, of course, keep the wins they already have. Then we get the
following standings:

2005 American League Standings

EAST

W

L

Pct.

GB

Boston

90.1499

71.8501

0.55648

0.0000

NY Yankees

87.9191

74.0809

0.54271

2.2307

Baltimore

86.4629

75.5371

0.53372

3.6869

Toronto

85.2847

76.7153

0.52645

4.8652

Tampa Bay

52.9923

109.0077

0.32711

37.1575

CENTRAL

W

L

Pct.

GB

Chicago Sox

102.4070

59.5930

0.63214

0.0000

Minnesota

89.6109

72.3891

0.55315

12.7961

Cleveland

87.9241

74.0759

0.54274

14.4829

Detroit

81.1966

80.8034

0.50121

21.2104

Kansas City

58.1550

103.8450

0.35898

44.2520

WEST

W

L

Pct.

GB

LA Angels

95.1631

66.8369

0.58743

0.0000

Texas

87.8488

74.1512

0.54228

7.3143

Oakland

82.8355

79.1645

0.51133

12.3276

Seattle

75.4218

86.5782

0.46557

19.7413

2005 National League Standings

EAST

W

L

Pct.

GB

Atlanta

93.9466

68.0534

0.57992

0.0000

Washington

88.5878

73.4122

0.54684

5.3589

Florida

83.5174

78.4826

0.51554

10.4293

NY Mets

81.5781

80.4219

0.50357

12.3685

Philadelphia

80.8821

81.1179

0.49927

13.0645

CENTRAL

W

L

Pct.

GB

St. Louis

102.8784

59.1216

0.63505

0.0000

Houston

81.8095

80.1905

0.50500

21.0689

Milwaukee

80.7379

81.2621

0.49838

22.1404

Chicago Cubs

80.5000

81.5000

0.49691

22.3784

Pittsburgh

72.7981

89.2019

0.44937

30.0803

Cincinnati

65.5210

96.4790

0.40445

37.3574

WEST

W

L

Pct.

GB

San Diego

86.4367

75.5633

0.53356

0.0000

LA Dodgers

73.5189

88.4811

0.45382

12.9178

Arizona

72.0555

89.9445

0.44479

14.3812

San Francisco

68.8848

93.1152

0.42521

17.5519

Colorado

59.7777

102.2223

0.36900

26.6590

Based on these predictions, Atlanta will keep its accustomed
first place in the NL East, Washington is a good shot for the Wild
Card, just because they've won so many games in the first half of
the season. And Boston and Minnesota will hold one to the AL East
and the Wild Card to (yeah!) keep the Yankees out of the
postseason.

Of course, these projections are just that, projections, and
aren't a guarantee of anything. Don't even think about using these
to place bets. At the end of the season we'll see how well these
predictions stack up.

This took a bit of detective work: Mandrake has the plugin under that name in the Penguin Liberation Front archives, but the dependencies to install it weren't compatible with Fedora's shipped version of gstreamer. Eventually, I thought to look in the the list of available RPMs for Fedora Core 4. Doing $ yum list > yum_files
and then looking at the output, I found the line: gstreamer-plugins-mp3.i386 0.8.8-0.lvn.1.4 livna
which looked promising. (The program is in the Livna repository, which is I installed with help from Fedora Core Tips & Tricks.) So install the package via:$ sudo yum install gstreamer-plugins-mp3
and off to the sound-juicer manual to learn how to add MP3 ripping capabilities:

And this works: except that I get error messages of the typeCouldn't find matching gstreamer tag for track-count
Couldn't find matching gstreamer tag for encoder
Couldn't find matching gstreamer tag for encoder-version
for every track, and at the end sound-juicer hung up and I had to kill it manually. We'll see if this problem persists.

Anyway, as a result of feedback I requested on that post, I've got some new information. You don't have to edit configuration files buried three levels deep to fix this. No, you just have to do a little bit of mouse clicking to change the configuration file from your browser. This post describes the procedure for Mozilla, but the same trick works in Firefox, to wit:

In the address bar of your browser type the string about:config
and hit return. You'll get a long confusing list of options. Some are in bold, some aren't, but don't worry about that.

Right-click anywhere in the display area. A box will appear. Click on the New option.

Another box will appear. In it, type network.protocol-handler.app.rtsp

Yet another box will appear. In it, type /usr/bin/realplay
or the location of whichever program you want to work.

Windows Users! I note that some of you have been searching for a solution to this problem as well. The problem seems to be in RealPlayer, not Firefox. If you go to Word_Whore, scroll past the politics, and look at the bottom of the post, you'll see that you should enable Real-Time Streaming Protocol by clicking on "Preferences=>Advanced=>Other Media" in RealPlayer and enable RTSP.

Wednesday, July 06, 2005

Of course, the main purpose of previous entry was to convert ogg formatted sound files to mp3 so that I could burn them to a CD and play them in my car. Why did I need the conversion? Because I was using sound-juicer to rip files from CDs, the juice defaults to ogg for compressed files, and anyway in FC4 there is no support for MP3s in there.

I thought that maybe, just maybe, I could use the same trick on sound-juicer as we did on SoX, but that turns out to be rather difficult. So the best thing to do is follow the advice in that link and use Grip to burn CDs. As long as the lame package is present, Grip will rip CDs to MP3 format if you ask. There is a small bit of configuring required, but it works very well.

I mentioned previously that one of the things I wanted to do with Fedora Core 4 was to find an MP3-enabled version of SoX, "the Swiss Army Knife" of sound processing programs. In FC3 I found a SoX+MP3 RPM file online. I still haven't found one for FC4. Fortunately, however, I found a hint for creating such an RPM online (search for "sox").

The procedure is rather simple, if you're willing to rebuild RPM files:

Make sure the packages lame, lame-devel, libmad, and libmad-devel are installed. If not, you'll need to install them. Assuming you followed Fedora Core Tips & Tricks to enable the freshrpms repository, you can do:sudo yum install libmad libmad-devel lame lame-devel
where sudo allows selected users to run root commands. If you these packages are already installed, yum will let you know about it.

When the program is finished, $ cd ~/rpmbuild/RPMS/i386
$ ls sox*
There should be three files with RPM extensions: sox*, sox-devel*, and sox-debuginfo*, where "*" hides all the version numbers and stuff. Since these RPMs were compiled with the lame and mad libraries, they contain an MP3 enabled version of SoX.

Now for the tricky part: we have to get the non-MP3 version of SoX off the system and replace it with the MP3-enabled version. This is difficult because a) the version of SoX on your system is probably the same as the one you just complied, so the rpm database won't recognize your version as an upgrade; and b) some programs depend on SoX to run, so the dependency checker in rpm will generate an error. To get rid of the old SoX, then, we must force the uninstall:$ rpm -e --nodeps sox sox-devel
assuming that you had sox-devel on your system.

Now we can install the brand-new version of SoX:$ sudo rpm -i sox-12.17.7-3.i386.rpm sox-devel-12.17.7-3.i386.rpm

Now test the program. Run $ sox -h
At the bottom of the output is a list of supported file formats. If you see "mp3", then SoX works.

Tuesday, July 05, 2005

You have to dig deep down in this advisory to figure out what the problem is. Clicking on the various buttons that hide text, it seems that the bug triggers the Java Virtual Machine to crash IE and "gain the same user rights as the local user," which in Windows usually means administrative privileges.

If you have to use IE, Microsoft has a few suggestions, but the best one is in this Washington Post article: switch browsers.

Monday, July 04, 2005

Science, second only to Nature in prestige, is celebrating its 125th aniversary by publishing a list of the Top 125 Things We Don't Know. Actually, that should be The Top 125 Things We Don't Know But Which We Might Figure Out Soon, but it's still a good list, including things like:

Way back in the past, even before the X window system for Unix-like operating systems was in widespread use, it was realized that sometimes a simple terminal screen wasn't enough.

So it was decided that there should be multiple terminals available to the average user. These days the default number is set at 7. So if, for example, you're logged into terminal #1, and you want to do something completely different, you can hit Alt-F2, and suddenly you're in terminal #2. You can even log into terminal #2 with a different account, so two people can work on the same terminal screen, provided that they don't beat each other silly fighting to press Alt-F1 or Alt-F2.

When X windows was added, the extra terminals were left intact. A good decision, as anyone who has watched a Windows graphic freeze up with no solution except to reboot can attest. In fact, in a default Linux system the X-window graphics module runs in terminal #7. The only difference between systems with X and systems without X is that you need an additional keypress to get to terminal #3, say, pressing Ctrl-Alt-F3 to get to terminal #3 and Ctrl-Alt-F7 to get back to X.

So if a program does hang up your X-windows system, all you have to do is hit, say Ctrl-Alt-F1, log in there, do ps xawu to find the offending process's ID number, and kill it. Most times X will come back by itself, but if it doesn't, you can log in as root and kill X. It will restart when you do Ctrl-Alt-F7.

Except with Fedora Core 4 and my Intel 82845G/GL "integrated" graphics device, it didn't work. Hitting Ctrl-Alt-F1 gave you a blank screen. I think that you could log in and Do Stuff, but I couldn't verify anything, and logging in seemed to freeze the Ctrl-Alt-F7 mechanism to get back to X.

This bug was often reported, but not fixed. Now, thanks to Fedora Weekly News, I find that there is a workaround (see Bug#2 in this link). It seems that the offending software is part of the new X distribution, specifically the library libvgahw.a. Apparently there is something in the new gcc 4 compiler that doesn't like the source code for this library. So the solution is: